Saturday, August 31, 2013

Here lately it seems that I seem to do all of my best, my
clearest thinking at night. Maybe I have always had that tendency, but I don’t
ever recall noticing it before, but it seems to be the case at least in my
recent memory. So, tonight, I find myself in a familiar posture, alone in my
dark living room in front of yet another blank screen patiently waiting for my
touch to bring it to life. A fan in the window carries a slightly less than
warm late summer breeze through my personal space, the faint scent of freshly
brewed coffee fills my senses, Its not warm in here, yet strangely not cold
either, the mood is perfect for a little reflection. Is Heaven real? Hmmm. Its
as good a question as any I suppose, I saw that written somewhere, or perhaps I
heard it spoken, I don’t really recall, only that it was recently brought into
place somewhere in the back of my mind this week, and it appears to have stayed
there until now.

I knew Heaven once, I lived there, somewhere in my early
childhood, and on some nights, some like this night, I can close my eyes and
see it as plain as day.

There is a wooden floor beneath my bare feet, my small hands
clutch the brass doorknob , and it turns freely, I give the door a slight nudge
and it swings outward onto a back porch that seems slightly sloped to one side.
I step out into the early morning air, the fresh dew, and the grass seems to
flow out into the world forever, in an endless sea of beautiful green. There
are large trees that stretch up into the sky for miles on end, and on one of
the lower branches there is a tire swing that hangs strangely still as if it
were waiting for the next ride. And as I step onto the grass the cold dew seeps
up and over the tops of my feet giving me a strange sensation.

I’m not sure what it is truthfully, whether or not the world
really was a much larger place then than it is now, or if it just seems that
way, because I was seeing it through the eyes of a child. It was more magical,
there was more wonder, and Heaven was a real place that I lived in, a place
that I touched regularly. Now, as I begrudgingly return to the here and now,
and that childhood memory slowly fades, I find myself wondering if I will ever see
heaven again. oh I am certain that I catch glimpses of it every now and then,
but the magic isn’t what it once was, and the open spaces in the world of
childhood have become somewhat cramped and closed in. but thankfully the world
can still be a place of wonder, You just have to force yourself to stop what
you are doing every once in awhile to take part in it.

Yes, I know Heaven to be real, I just don’t live there
anymore, I don’t see endless fields of green, and miles of empty clean blue
skies, and a lot of the trees have been cut down, to make room for new housing
tracks. I am not a child anymore, I don’t see the world the same way as I used
to, it is a bit smaller now, and I can see it for what it truly is. I see the
bad with the good, and take both as I see fit. Everyone has their own
interpretation of Heaven, and certainly to some it remains a myth. The reality
for me is simple, I know that I will never be able to again see the world
through the eyes of a ten year old child, but that doesn’t mean that I have to
stop trying. So on finding Heaven? I guess it all depends on where you look.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

While I was
going through my pictures folders the other day I came across some older pics
that I took last year that never made it onto a blog post. And then I realized
I have only ever shared- (For the most part) – any of my photography on
Blogster and occasionally on Facebook but I have rarely posted anything on
Blogger in concerns to my photography.
All of the pictures I’ve taken were taken with my little Canon PowerShot A810, and mostly it is of Nevada
Sunrises and (More recently) sunsets,
here lately though the zoom button on the camera has been on the fritz so I
will have to be buying a new one soon. I have my choices narrowed down to 2 possibilities #1- the Canon SX 160 IS with 16x optical zoom and 16 mp’s. #2-
The Canon SX 500 IS with 30x zoom and
also has 16 MP’s. Below are some of the pictures that I took last year
with my old Canon. The last pic is a little blurry but it came out with a kinda surreal feeling to it so I included it.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Have you
ever seen somebody doing something so ridiculously stupid that actually gave
you one of those WTF moments? like one time at Mills Park here in Carson City I
was watching a group of kids on skateboards doing all of these fancy Schmancy
tricks at the skateboard track, but this one kid was standing on top of this stone pic nic
table and his plan- (I’m guessing) was to jump from one table to another on his
skateboard, and they were at least 20 feet apart. I had one of those WTF
moments, and I remember thinking, WHAT IN THE HELL IS HE THINKING?? well long
story short he missed- (By a country mile) but he did land on the grass so I
suspect the only thing that he hurt was his pride.

I see people do bizarre things all the time, and most times
I’m left with the thought, “I wonder if this person’s brain is functioning
properly?” A few days ago I had such an occasion,
one of the machines on our line at work was all out of whack, the molds weren’t
dropping onto the line properly. And when they would drop, sometimes the tray wouldn’t load the sand mold onto the
table, and when the next mold came along it would run into the first one and we
would end up with a big pile of compressed sand on the loading table with a
bunch of mangled cores to clean out. A
big mess to say the least, needless to say as the shift went on the problem
only got worse so they finally called maintenance over to get one of their guys to check out one
of the power panels on the machine to
see if one of the censor’s were screwed up.

I swear the first thing this dope did was grab a
screw driver and started poking around at shit, and as I was watching this Three
Stooge’s routine unfold- I just couldn’t
bring myself to simply look away, I was thinking to myself, “Self? do you
suppose he’s going to turn off the main power to the machine before he starts messing with
it?” Nooooo, silly rabbit, that would be too obvious! well I’m not sure what
eventually convinced him that messing around with a live electrical circuit was
a bad idea but I think it may have had something to do with the sparks that
came out of the machine, Now I’m not a mainenance guy, and I don’t know a doo-hickey from a
thing-a-ma-bob, but I do know enough to turn the power off on anything that
runs on electricity--- BEFORE you work
on it! well before I left work today that very same machine was doing that very
same thing again, only this time the boss was over there with the maintenance
guy chewing his ass out for not turning the power off again. I don’t know what this clown was thinking the
first time he pulled this stunt, but obviously he was thinking the very same
thing this time too. Or maybe the real problem was, he wasn’t thinking at all..
It was definetely a WTF moment for me.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

I made the
mistake of leaving the fan running in the front window of my living room last
night, hey it happens- I’d fallen asleep and forgotten to take it out and close
the window. Its my own fault, I knew it was going to get chilly, I just fell
asleep. I woke this morning to the plugged sinuses that as of late; have become
the bane of my existence, but I think
they were due more to the fan kicking up the dust mites in my apartment more so
than it being a sign of coming illness. strangely enough though- it wasn’t the
sinuses that woke me up, there was an ungodly commotion right outside my
window, so I rose to investigate. and now I’m kind of sorry that I did. I
stepped out onto the front landing and walked over to the railing and leaned over the edge to see what the
commotion was all about. directly below me; hiding behind some shrubery there
was a short stumpy little fellow shouting out profanities at people walking
down the sidewalk.

“What’s all
of this nonsense about then?” I yelled down at him.

When the
coast was clear he stood up and defiantly put his hands on his hips and looked
up at me.

“Go back
inside bub, this doesn’t concern you.” He taunted.

“No
douchebag, you’re yelling outside my window at 6:00 AM on my day off when I’m
trying to rest, so it does kind of concern me, maybe I should come down there
and we could have this conversation face to face.” I retorted

Right then
and there his whole demeanor changed.

“Look mister
I’m just trying to do my job, I’m Toby the Troll and this is what I do!”

“You’re a
Troll?”

He nodded.

“I thought
you guys all moved to the internet years ago.”

“We did, but
I lost my internet connection last night so I had to improvise.”

Out of the
corner of my eye I saw an elderly looking gentleman walking his dog down the sidewalk, Toby immediately jumped back behind the
bushes and began throwing out insults, barbs and taunts.

“Democrats
are Pussies! Democrats are Pussies! Republican’s are all retarded conservatives
who couldn’t even get laid at a hookers Convention! Independants all have
little winkies!”

By this time
my neighbor became aware of the commotion and was now standing right next to me
leaning over the railing; curiously looking down at Toby. he looked at me and
then back down at Toby.

“What are
you doing down there hiding in the bushes you little jerk! don’t you know how
early it is?” He asked.

Toby looked
up at my neighbor Louie.

“I don’t
have a computer right now so I’m hiding behind this bush to preserve my
anonymity! Brown people Suck!!”

“Why don’t
just go inside and get some coffee and let me handle this little troll.. Okay?”

Still angry
as all hell, my neighbor turned to go back inside his apartment to make his
morning coffee as I returned my attention to the little troll down in the
bushes.

“Anonymity
aye?”

“Yeah its
kinda important to us trolls that nobody knows who we really are, that’s why we
dig the internet so much!”

“Well Toby I
want you to listen to me very carefully, THIS isn’t the internet, I CAN see
you. Do you get my drift? I told him,

“I don’t
understand.. I’m hiding in the bushes! you can’t see me!”

“Hmmm.. Toby?

“Yes?”

“Did you
ever go to high school?”

“Yes.”

“And do you
know what an atomic wedgie is?”

“I don’t
believe so.”

“Well that’s
where someone comes up from behind you, and grabs the waistband of your
underwear and yanks them so far up the
crack of your ass that your testicles feel like a lump in your throat. now if
you don’t shut up and go home Guess what I’m going to come down there and do to
you?”

Silence. I
turned to go back to my apartment just in time to see my neighbor Louie step
back onto the landing..